now. Not having Fyne with me to set the pace I let myself drift, rather
than walk, in the direction of the farmhouse. To drift is the only
reposeful sort of motion (ask any ship if it isn't) and therefore
consistent with thoughtfulness. And I pondered: How is one an orphan "to
a certain extent"?

No amount of solemnity could make such a statement other than bizarre.
What a strange condition to be in. Very likely one of the parents only
was dead? But no; it couldn't be, since Fyne had said just before that
"there was really no one" to communicate with. No one! And then
remembering Mrs. Fyne's snappy "Practically" my thoughts fastened upon
that lady as a more tangible object of speculation.

I wondered--and wondering I doubted--whether she really understood
herself the theory she had propounded to me. Everything may be
said--indeed ought to be said--providing we know how to say it. She
probably did not. She was not intelligent enough for that. She had no
knowledge of the world. She had got hold of words as a child might get
hold of some poisonous pills and play with them for "dear, tiny little
marbles." No! The domestic-slave daughter of Carleon Anthony and the
little Fyne of the Civil Service (that flower of civilization) were not
intelligent people. They were commonplace, earnest, without smiles and
without guile. But he had his solemnities and she had her reveries, her
lurid, violent, crude reveries. And I thought with some sadness that all
these revolts and indignations, all these protests, revulsions of
feeling, pangs of suffering and of rage, expressed but the uneasiness of
sensual beings trying for their share in the joys of form, colour,
sensations--the only riches of our world of senses. A poet may be a
simple being but he is bound to be various and full of wiles, ingenious
and irritable. I reflected on the variety of ways the ingenuity of the